Abstract
This article is based on the assumption of musical power to change the listener's mood. The paper studies the outcome of two experiments on the regulation of emotional states in a series of participants who listen to different auditions. The present research focuses on note value, an important musical cue related to rhythm. The influence of two concepts linked to note value is analyzed separately and discussed together. The two musical cues under investigation are tempo and rhythmic unit. The participants are asked to label music fragments by using opposite meaningful words belonging to four semantic scales, namely “Tension” (ranging from Relaxing to Stressing), “Expressiveness” (Expressionless to Expressive), “Amusement” (Boring to Amusing) and “Attractiveness” (Pleasant to Unpleasant). The participants also have to indicate how much they feel certain basic emotions while listening to each music excerpt. The rated emotions are “Happiness,” “Surprise,” and “Sadness.” This study makes it possible to draw some interesting conclusions about the associations between note value and emotions.
Highlights
Brain structures and networks related to music processing of many kinds, including music perception, emotion and music, and sensory processing and music, have been discovered by psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists (Hunt, 2015)
The current paper introduces some hints in the projects overall aim to investigate the listeners changes in emotional state through playing different auditions that have been composed under defined parameters of note value
With the augmentation of tempo, there is an increase in the mean values of emotions “Happiness” and “Surprise.” There is a similar behavior in semantic scales
Summary
Brain structures and networks related to music processing of many kinds, including music perception, emotion and music, and sensory processing and music, have been discovered by psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists (Hunt, 2015). There has been an increase of research that relates music and emotion within neuropsychology (see e.g., Peretz, 2010). The two experiments presented in this paper are part of a project named “Improvement of the Elderly Quality of Life and Care through Smart Emotion Regulation” (Castillo et al, 2014b, 2016; Fernández-Caballero et al, 2014). The project’s general objective is to find solutions for improving the quality of life and care of aging people who wish to continue living at home with the aid of emotion elicitation techniques. Music, color and light are the proposed stimulating means to regulate their emotions toward a “positive” mood in accordance with the guidelines of a physician
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